I learned to cook from my mom, who learned to cook from HER mom. I don’t know if SHE learned to cook from HER mom, or was self taught, or what. But definitely used the Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook, which she handed down to my mom. I have a copy but not her copy, with the stains on the section on pancakes and the notes and the crease where the book falls open automatically to often-used recipes.

The cook book has easily FOUR HUNDRED MILLION BILLION recipes but we only ever used a few of them. My goal this year is to bake up one recipe a week for a full year, focusing on desserts. I was initially going to do all cookies but some of these recipes…. look man. Dates. Ground raisins. Prunes as far as the eye can see. Hickory nuts. Do hickory nuts even exist any more? That’s a rhetorical question, don’t answer.

I’m selecting recipes that look good, as opposed to those “ew look at this old timey jello-based food!” projects. I’m also trying to avoid nuts because my kid has a nut allergy. This cut out a LOT of cookie recipes. This cook book has 300 cookie recipes. I’ve managed to select…24. Plus I’m going to donk around with a recipe I used to use a lot that is from that era.

What era is that, you might ask? The book was originally published in 1950, which means most of the recipes were created/tested in the 1940s. I say “most” because the book was republished a few times and I assume there were more recipes added, or corrected. I could be wrong.